Spouse can never seem to pay bills on time!

[Anonymous]

Great thread. Always helps to get ideas when faced with challenges such as yours. Good suggestions here. Good luck!

[Drash]

set the bills on auto pay at least minimum.that way you don't get a hit on your credit l assume you have joint account since you been together for a minute.If she can't change you guys should have separate accounts.she won't like it and you might be called afew wonderful names, but at the end of the day it's your credit you are protecting .

[capitalkid]

We have 2 checking accounts just for this reason.

1 account is a joint account we share for daily related expenses, 1 Acct is just in my name and before we do anything Xtra, I move all the money that we need to have for the monthly bills into what is designated as The Bill Pay Account, I have my spreadsheets tentatively marked out 6 months in advance, The accounts are both linked and verified with overdraft protection through the same bank.  Opening a second account was 25$ for us, and we do not have monthly maintenance fees to keep up with. I keep a baseline of 25$ per month that we NEVER go below in either account.  

Since we have done this, I have not thought about bills bouncing again.  I do the math put the money in that is needed and pay the bills.  

This might be beneficial for your situation.  

[Anonymous]

My wife and I have a seperate checking acct just for bills.  We padded it with $1,000 so there was always extra for the bills that fluctuate.  We then looked at the monthly average for ALL of our bills and have that amt direct deposited into our acct every month (we do half twice a month since that's how we're paid) with the remainder going into our "fun" checking acct.  Then we set up all bills to auto pay form that acct and just never spend from it.  We haven't had to physically pay bills in almost a year and it's amazing!  Completely stress free and almost feels like you have no bills at all...other than your paycheck looking a lot smaller each month until you just start to forget about the bill acct. 

Since we don't spend out of that acct, I also use it to sock away money.  When we get bonuses, we usually put half in the bill acct, and have fun with the rest.  That way our pad grows to gaurd against any possibility of a bill overdrawing the acct, and also gives us some rainy day money if something goes wrong with one of our vehicles or something.